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Chinese Highlight of Dismal K–12 Enrollment Survey

Stressed college student for exam in classroomThe recently released National K–12 Foreign Language Enrollment Survey Report shows that a total of 10.6 million U.S. students ranging from kindergarten to twelfth grade are studying a world language, accounting for only about 20% of U.S. school children.

As this is a first-of-its-kind comprehensive study of world language enrollments across the formal U.S. education system, it is not possible to determine if the figures indicate growth in world language enrollments, but it does offer a closer look at language education in the country’s primary and secondary schools, from which a baseline can be established.

The survey shows that Spanish is by far the most widely taught language in all 50 U.S. states and Washington, DC, with 7.36 million students, while 1.29 million studied French and nearly 331,000 were enrolled in German courses.

In U.S. high schools, Romance languages are taught most often, with 46% of those classes focusing on Spanish and another 21% on French. Chinese, German, and Latin are the only other world languages that account for more than 5% of the courses offered to U.S. secondary school students.

As many as 227,086 students have enrolled in Chinese language courses, which are now available in primary and secondary schools in Washington, DC, and every U.S. state except South Dakota, ranking as the fourth-most-widely taught foreign language in the country’s education system.

The soaring popularity of Chinese language learning across the U.S. is “remarkable” as one of the most interesting findings of the survey, Dr. Dan Davidson, president of American Councils for International Education, which implemented the survey, told China’s Xinhua news agency.

Of particular significance is the disparity of language-learning opportunity between different states. In Arkansas and Arizona, fewer than 10% of students are studying a language other than English, and in California, the figure is less than 14%, while New Jersey tops the list at just over 51%.

The report, sponsored by the Language Flagship at the Defense Language and National Security Education Office (DLNSEO), conducted and published by American Councils for International Education in partnership with the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL), the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL), and the Modern Language Association (MLA), and in collaboration with the National Council of State Supervisors for Languages (NCSSFL), found a striking “lack of knowledge about foreign-language teaching and learning” and concluded that “the sheer difficulty of collecting data is noteworthy.”

Cuba Educational Policy Reversal Condemned

President Trump has announced a new executive action restoring restrictions on travel and trade with Cuba, “I am canceling the previous administration’s completely one-sided deal,” he announced to an appreciative crowd of Cuban dissidents in Miami.

One of the major changes in the policy directive is that U.S. travelers making educational people-to-people trips can no longer go to Cuba individually but must travel in groups accompanied by a company representative.

However, despite the rhetoric, the order appears to be less far-reaching than the President claimed, for example, the embassies that opened in Havana and Washington will be maintained, Cuban Americans will be allowed to send money to their families and visit them, and U.S. companies will be allowed to continue commercial transportation, including flights between the two countries.

Jill Welch, NAFSA (Assn. for International Education) deputy executive director for Public Policy, criticized the move, “Regressing to past travel and trade restrictions with Cuba will only pull America back into a 50-year-old failed policy of isolation with the island nation and restrict our ability to learn from one another. For more than a decade, a diverse coalition that includes international educators has advocated for opening relations with Cuba. Harmful changes like these are a prime example of why Congress must act to codify the law and allow open trade and travel with Cuba and the Cuban people. Freeing Americans to travel and conduct education and business interactions with any nation as freely as we are permitted to do so with every other country in the world should not be a privilege for a few—it is a basic human right because after all, travel is inherently educational.”

“Today is a major setback for international relations, NAFSA, our allies and the Cuban and American people. We call on Congress to permanently remove restrictions on travel and trade to Cuba by enacting the bipartisan measures introduced in the House and the Senate, the Freedom to Travel to Cuba Act of 2017 and the Cuba Trade Act of 2017, restoring the freedom to travel, trade and learn,” Welch concluded.

 

UCLA Brings Aztec From the Past into the Present


vector illustration sketch drawing aztec pattern cacao tree, mayans, cacao beans and decorative borders yellow, red, green, brown, grey colors on white background
aztec chocolate pattern

In an interesting combination of art and language, a UCLA professor is leading the research for an Aztec text.

UCLA historian, Kevin Terraciano, is working with art experts at the Getty Center in collaboration with Italy’s Laurentian Library in Florence to create an online, annotated version of the ancient Florentine Codex —an Aztec text written in Nahuatl dating from 1577. There is only one copy of the codex currently in existence, so the creation of an online version will make the text accessible to both the public, and also the very descendants of Aztecs living in Mexico.

Terrancino has been at the forefront of research in Nahuatl. As director of the Latin American Institute, he had a large part in bringing Nahuatl to classrooms in UCLA. According to the UCLA Newsroom, the historian says that most Mexicans consider Nahuatl the language of ancient Mexico.

Currently, varieties of Nahuatl are spoken by an estimate 1.5 million Nahua peoples, many of whom live in central Mexico. During the period before the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, the language was something of a coda franca of Mexico. The language also began to be used in literary instances, with many chronicles, grammars, works of poetry, administrative documents, and codices like the Florentine Codex. Generally the language was distributed orally, not visually. However, some researchers argue that the Aztecs had developed a sufficient means of visual representation of the language shortly before the Spanish Inquisition.

While the language is currently spoken widely in Mexico, and hints of it can be seen even in English (avocado, coyote, chili, coyote and tomoto all come from Nahuatl), it is not often studied or taught in Mexico or the United States. The move to digitize the codex is emblematic of a move to not only make ancient Nahuatl resources more accessible to speakers of the language, but also to move the indigenous language into academia.

 

Bilinguals May Recognize Voices Better

A new study in Bilingualism: Language and Cognition shows an advantage in bilingual children when determining voices of who is talking (talker-voice information).

Countless studies have proven that there are many benefits, in both cognitive and social tasks, so the new findings on recognition of voices by Dr. Susannah Levi add to the growing pile of research in support of bilingualism.

Research

Levi selected 41 children (22 monolinguals and 19 bilinguals) who were then separated into two groups by age. All of the students in both the younger and older groups were attending schools in New York City with English as the primary language of instruction. All students were tested on their abilities to distinguish vocal recognition in English and German (an unfamiliar language). The researchers told the children that they would be listening to either English or an unidentified language other than English. They then played pairs of words separated by a few moments of pause, and then asked the children whether the speakers were the same person or different people.

The children were also tested on talker-voice learning in English. First they completed five days of talker-voice training in which they learned to identify the voices of three talkers that were identified on a computer screen by cartoon characters. The children were then played a voice and instructed to decide which character’s voice was played.

Across both tasks, researchers found that both age and bilingualism were determining factors—older children performed better than younger children, and bilingual children performed better than monolingual children.

“Improved talker-voice processing by the bilingual children suggests that a bilingual advantage exists in a social aspect of speech perception,” Levi says, “where the focus is not on processing the linguistic information in the signal, but instead on processing information about who is talking.”

Why Do Bilinguals Perform Better?

One reason for this finding is that previous research has demonstrated that listeners perform worse when processing voices that have foreign and dialectal accents across the board. However, these findings indicated that those with nonstandard, or a less-spoken dialectal accent were better at understanding those with a standard accent since they are more likely to be exposed to those with a standard dialectal accent. This indicates that bilingual speakers in this study may outperform monolinguals because they have more experience with foreign accented speech.

Another explanation could be that bilinguals have better cognitive control and are able to focus on the task while suppressing the irrelevant information of accented speech. “Yet another possibility, the study says, “is that bilinguals have better social perception and perceiving the voice of a talker is highly relevant in social situations.”

“Taken together, Levi says, “the current study shows that bilingual children – here defined loosely as those children who speak, read, or understand another language or who have a family member who speaks another language living in the household – have a perceptual advantage when processing information about a talker’s voice. They are faster to learn the voices of unfamiliar talkers and also perform better overall. They are even better in an unfamiliar language, suggesting that the benefits found for the English stimuli are not attributable only to experience listening to foreign-accented speech.”

 

Drawing on Ideas for Language Learners

two children who are english learners backseat reading a mapMark Oronzio suggests concept-mapping strategies for language learners

For more than 40 years, education researchers have advocated the use of concept mapping as an effective approach to fostering higher-order thinking skills, moving students from mere knowledge acquisition to knowledge utilization and creation (Novak and Cañas, 2008). By specifying and linking concepts in a concept map, students and language learners create a visible structure of their understanding in a given domain that can be modified over time to assimilate new concepts and reflect new understanding.

In short, concept mapping can move learners toward more in-depth learning, i.e., more meaningful learning, by facilitating the process of linking new concepts with existing knowledge and experience. Concept mapping is an effective strategy for educators to use to support English language learners (ELLs) and prepare them for success in school and beyond.

There are several research-based methods for applying concept mapping to language learning. Here are some of the ways teachers can use concept mapping to differentiate instruction for ELL students:

Pre-Reading

• Invite students to share what they already know about a particular concept in a concept map prior to reading. This approach provides students with the concepts and words that they are about to encounter in the reading text as well as an overview of the content to be learned. Then, ask students to add information to their maps while reading to provide a visual aid for building on their prior knowledge. This could be an individual or whole-class assignment.

Pre-Writing

• Task students with brainstorming about a given topic by making connections among ideas and analyzing information in a concept map in preparation for writing. Allow students to discuss their maps in groups and share their ideas for writing so they can hone or expand their focus as needed. After researching their topic, students can modify their maps to capture new information and organize their thoughts before writing their compositions. Research has shown that this approach helps ELL students improve their writing.

Vocabulary Building

• Enable students to create concept maps to define and better understand key vocabulary terms. Students can access videos, text, and images to learn about a term and then build a map that visually links the term to its various meanings, uses, related words, synonyms, and more. This allows students to personalize their connections to the vocabulary words, improving their recall and comprehension. The map provided in this post is an example of this approach.

Developing Critical Thinking

• Encourage students to create a concept map of a unit or topic with key terms and essential questions during and after a series of lessons. Help them to see the big picture of the topic as well as build a scaffolding of meaning, a governing framework for future success, by emphasizing the main ideas, key concepts, and principles.

By visually expressing the association of related concepts, concept maps help learners to find unseen connections between ideas, organize information easily, and create new knowledge, which in turn clarifies their thinking. This process of making knowledge explicit fosters the understanding of complex information for ELL students without elaborative written explanations. The concept maps are also useful visual aids that make later study and recall easier for language learners than with linear notes.

Assessment

• Use concept maps to ascertain student understanding of a concept or unit taught. By making students’ thinking and learning visible, concept maps reveal to teachers, and to the students themselves, the gaps in understanding at any given moment. After reteaching or employing interventions, have students adjust their concept maps to assess their knowledge development over time.

Reading Comprehension

• Ask students to build a concept map as they read a book or text, identifying main ideas, finding subconcepts, and linking related ideas together. An earlier post on close reading strategies shows how this method can help all learners, particularly ELL/ESL students, improve reading comprehension. Try any of these methods with ELL students to help them develop content-area knowledge, literacy skills, and critical thinking, as well as to evaluate their learning needs and progress.

Additional Background 

The Ideaphora concept-mapping environment is the latest and most comprehensive tool for facilitating critical thinking through web-based concept mapping. It builds on decades of research investigating the use of concept mapping as an effective approach to fostering meaningful learning (Hilbert and Renkl, 2008; Novak and Cañas, 2008). In addition, it benefits from years of research experience designing and integrating technology-supported concept mapping in the classroom (Anderson-Inman and Ditson, 1999; Anderson-Inman and Horney, 1996/1997; Liu et al., 2010; Muirhead, 2006).

For more than 40 years, Novak and colleagues have advocated the use of concept mapping as an effective approach to fostering higher-order thinking skills, moving students from mere knowledge acquisition to knowledge utilization and creation (Novak and Cañas, 2008). By specifying and linking concepts in a concept map, students create a visible structure of their understanding in a given domain that can be modified over time to assimilate new concepts and reflect new understanding.

In short, concept mapping can move learners toward more in-depth learning, i.e., more meaningful learning, by facilitating the process of linking new concepts with existing knowledge and experience. Research on concept mapping reveals the process can have a powerful effect on learning. For example, Brullo (2012) found that students who created concept maps while taking notes had better test recall, could access information more quickly during tests, and scored better on content post-tests than students who did not have the concept-mapping experience.

According to Brullo, students who created concept maps were thinking on a deeper level about the text prior to taking the post-test, as these students quickly recalled information and answered the questions. Research also reveals that technology can play an important role in simplifying and supporting the creation, modification, and management of learners’ concept maps (Chang et al., 2002; Liu et al., 2006; Liu and Lee, 2013).

In 1956, Bloom proposed a taxonomy of intellectual behavior important for learning, with acquisition of knowledge at the bottom and evaluation of knowledge at the top. Decades of research on how to promote higher-order thinking skills has led to a revision of Bloom’s taxonomy and closer alignment with 21st-century learning goals (Anderson and Krathwohl et al., 2001). The lowest level of learning in the revised taxonomy is “remembering” existing knowledge, and the highest is “creating” new knowledge—a differentiation in skill level also found in the Common Core State Standards.

In response to the revised taxonomy, Mayer (2002) advocated moving from instruction that focuses on retention of learning (remembering and understanding) toward instruction that fosters transfer of learning (applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating)—in other words, “meaningful learning.” Key to the concept of meaningful learning is the learner’s ability to link new ideas and information to prior experience and existing knowledge (Anderson-Inman and Ditson, 1999).

Mark Oronzio is CEO and co-founder of Ideaphora, a concept-mapping platform for students to improve their comprehension of digital content while building higher-order thinking skills. Oronzio’s insight and leadership is based on more than 20 years of experience in executive-level positions for education technology companies, including Inspiration Software.

Get Real, Teacher! -Virtual Reality Teaching

Vector artwork depicts automation, future concept, artificial intelligence, and robot replacing mankind.Rene Gadelha believes that only careful implementation will realize the promise of virtual reality in education

Revolutionizing Education

Virtual reality (VR) has the potential to revolutionize education as we know it. Specifically, it immerses students in their learning more than any other available medium. It blocks out both visual and auditory distractions in the classroom and has the ability to deeply connect students with the material they are learning in a way that has never been possible before.

To say it is revolutionary may be underselling VR learning. It is no secret that schools are striving to create technology-rich environments, but these must be deliberate, with focus on learning and the curriculum; it is not enough to simply equip schools with computers and tablets. Most kids are exposed to technology, mainly for entertainment and communication purposes; it has changed the landscape of how they view the world.

Schools should embrace kids’ enthusiasm for the technology used for entertainment and leverage that into technology used for infotainment… enter VR. In order to be successful in a traditional learning setting, however, the VR content must be meaningful, engaging, and navigable so that the learning sticks.

Why Change?

Education pedagogy needs to evolve to meet students where they are—individualized instruction for each learner is the ultimate goal. Yet in many schools across the country, we are still applying the old factory model of schooling that has been around for nearly a century: students in rows, content disseminated homogeneously, and the “sage on stage” mode of teaching that promotes memorization, recitation, and regurgitation on tests.

Demands on workforce readiness and post-education expectations require education to embrace a change. VR has the potential to dramatically shift how teachers teach, but more importantly how learners learn.For years now, schools have employed whiteboards, projectors, computers, tablets, gaming devices, and the like not only to deliver curriculum but also to advance it.

VR is appropriate for all students and specifically would benefit English language learners and those with ADHD, learning disabilities, or other learning challenges because of its immersive qualities and engaging content. The sheer fact that many school districts now have a dedicated technology budget is proof that tech is here to stay.

A Seismic Shift

As a former teacher, curriculum writer, education consultant, school board director, and parent, I have seen much of what surfaces in schools—successes and failures. Without a doubt, when done properly, I believe VR will seismically shift education going forward. It is not enough, however, to simply put students in front of a computer and have them perform the same tasks. If we are viewing students as individual learners—which we should—then we need to allow these learners flexibility in educational pace, path, and content control, which can be accomplished through a robust VR curriculum.

Quality VR

How do you judge quality in VR content? It is important to consider the following elements: Curriculum rooted in standards to ensure learning is not occurring in a vacuum and aligns with the district’s existing pedagogy.

Diversity in topics—students should recognize what they are seeing in VR to establish a comfort level, but also they should experience new things to deepen their knowledge and broaden their horizons. Assessments that gauge students’ learning based on what they are experiencing in VR settings; learners should be able to demonstrate newly acquired or effectively reinforced skills; an integrated feedback loop so that teachers have access to their pupils’ results is important, too.

A variety of programming types (e.g., animation, video, interactive games, etc.) that stretch learners’ imaginations and stave off predictability; students’ senses should be stimulated so that they are fully engaged and immersed in the lessons by compelling auditory and visual components Functionality that allows users to interact by rewinding, pausing, skipping, etc., so that they are learning at their own pace and are in control of the content delivery—this is student-centered learning in action.

Highly capable, reputable platforms so that production pieces are well supported and can be viewed seamlessly.

Incorporating VRA newer trend in schools is the use of flexible learning environments. For instance, a typical classroom might have students divided into several groups, each one working on something different, though all activities have been planned by the teacher and tie into the curriculum; often, one of the groups is working with computers.

VR fits this flexible learning model well in that it can easily satisfy the technology-driven portion of the lesson. More ideal would be the resource of a STEM or computer lab outfitted with VR to support an entire class simultaneously.

The benefit in this scenario is exponential: while students work on their lesson in VR, the teacher is freed up to use her expertise and training in a more targeted manner with individual pupils as a facilitator, tutor, counselor, mentor, planner, or evaluator. This flexibility is priceless, as schools already recognize that many of the biggest gains in students’ progress are based on customizable, student-centered learning.

Quality VR content supports this goal because it will help further instruction and interest in the lesson content, while allowing teachers to pinpoint students’ needs and address them with more individualized attention—this is optimal for both students and teachers. The VR revolution is on the horizon.

 

Rene Gadelha is the curriculum director at VictoryVR, a creator of virtual reality curriculum for K–12 schools. She is a former classroom teacher and has worked with Pearson Prentice Hall, CTB McGraw Hill, and ETS in the areas of curriculum development, item writing, and assessment scoring.

The New Digital Divide

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double exposure image of financial graph and digital human 3dillustration on business technologyKeith Oelrich argues that teacher preparation and curriculum design are the keys to closing the digital technological opportunity gap

A Gap Emerges

In the mid-’90s, as personal computer and internet access was becoming more available to many in the U.S., a correlation could be observed between access to technology and socioeconomic status. Scholars, policy makers, and advocacy groups referred to this as the “ digital divide,” and many school districts began investing in both broadband internet and classroom technology to combat this issue.

Today, more than 99% of U.S. public schools are connected to the internet, in large part thanks to the Federal Communications Commission’s congressionally mandated E-Rate program, which went into effect in 1998. School districts continue to spend billions each year on hardware, broadband, maintenance, and other instructional-technology software and tools. During the 2015–16 year alone, 46% of districts increased their spending on hardware, which included tablets, laptops, and desktop computers.

More than Access

Though broadband use and school hardware availability are at an all-time high, a new digital divide has appeared. Today’s students carry cell phones in their pockets that are more powerful than the NASA command center that landed men on the moon in 1969, but many still do not have the basic technology skills they need for success in school and in life.

This skills gap is apparent in the recent analysis of scores earned by students on online versus paper-and-pencil versions of assessments developed by the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC). For example, students who took the 2014–15 PARCC exam on a computer tended to score lower than those who took the same test using paper and pencil. In 2016, a district in Arizona did a study among its students that showed those with strong digital literacy skills scored higher than those with marginal or low digital literacy skills on their state’s online assessment. This suggests that lower online test scores can be linked to insufficient digital literacy skills.

If students do not develop a strong foundation of digital literacy starting in elementary school, the digital divide will only widen as they continue in school. If students enter high school or college without the proper digital literacy skills, they will not be able to meet the expectations of their classes, including the use of word processing and spreadsheet programs, or effectively conduct research to identify credible online sources.

The impact of this technology skills gap is also significant for individuals entering the workforce. By 2020, it is estimated that nearly 80% of jobs will require some level of technology proficiency. Productivity lost due to low technology skills is estimated to cost the U.S. economy $1.3 trillion each year. Additionally, time wasted as a result of inadequate digital skills is estimated to consume 21% of a worker’s time, costing businesses roughly $10,000 per employee per year.

Obstacles to Preparing Students

Two barriers to providing students with quality digital-literacy instruction are inadequate teacher training and the lack of a standardized curriculum at most schools. Core-area teachers take many college classes on their chosen subjects and are typically provided with a district-approved curriculum. On the other hand, many teachers across the U.S. are expected to teach students technology skills but do not receive specific training on how to teach these skills and are not provided with any sort of curriculum to follow.

When this happens, teachers are essentially required to create their own curriculums by sifting through thousands of online resources. Vetting the quality and grade appropriateness of these items and creating lessons from scratch can be difficult and time-consuming. As a result, students may encounter uneven quality of instruction from classroom to classroom and school to school.

Digital Literacy Instruction for All

In an effort to tackle this technology skills gap, many states have adopted national standards, or created their own state standards, that require specific technology skills to be demonstrated within core subject areas. For this to be effective, districts need to provide teachers with training that includes best practices for using technology in the classroom, models to follow, and clear guidelines, together with a curriculum for use across the district and ongoing support. When teachers feel included in the discussion about the role of technology in their schools and are provided with the right support, they will feel empowered to introduce new concepts to their students.

It is clear that this new digital divide will not be bridged simply by providing students with more access to technology. By addressing the issues of teacher preparation and a standardized curriculum, districts can make great strides toward ensuring that all students—no matter which classes they are in or what schools they attend—will be given an equal opportunity to develop the digital literacy skills they need to succeed in the classroom, in online assessments, and later in life.

References

www.internetworldstats.com/links10.htm
www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/03/the-schools-where-kids-cant-go-online/387589/
thejournal.com/Articles/2016/01/19/Report-Education-Tech-Spending-on-the-Rise.aspx?Page=1
www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2016/02/03/parcc-scores-lower-on-computer.html
info.learning.com/hubfs/Articles/AZMerit_Flagstaff_OnePageStudy_Jan17.pdf
businessdegrees.uab.edu/resources/infographics/the-it-skills-gap/

International Data Corporation (IDC). “Bridging the Information Worker Productivity Gap: New Challenges and Opportunities for IT.”

Keith Oelrich, CEO of Learning.com, has been a pioneer in the K–12 online-education market for the past 17 years. During that time, he has served as CEO of several companies which have collectively provided K–12 online-education programs to thousands of districts, tens of thousands of schools, and millions of students and their families. Keith was previously the founder and CEO of Insight Schools.
Insight Schools operates one of the nation’s leading networks of full-time, diploma-granting online public high schools and is now a subsidiary of K12, Inc. Prior to founding Insight Schools, Keith was the president and CEO of KC Distance Learning (KCDL), where he operated the largest private online high school in the U.S. Before joining KCDL, Keith was the president and CEO of Apex Learning, a leading virtual high school company founded by Microsoft’s co-founder Paul Allen.
Founded in 1999, Learning.com serves 6.7 million students each year in more than 20 countries. Their digital literacy curriculum for grades K–8 provides grade-appropriate lessons with embedded instruction to engage students as they develop critical digital-literacy skills such as keyboarding, online safety, and coding.

Diversity Through the Big Screen

Chita Espino-Bravo explains how to use film to introduce diversity into advanced conversation classes

person making film in desert with diversity in title

Teaching an advanced Spanish conversation course at the university level can be challenging for many reasons, but for me, the biggest challenge was trying to find a textbook with clearly organized topics for conversation. I found plenty of wonderful textbooks that were appropriate for low-advanced or high-intermediate Spanish conversation, but nothing just right for advanced students, so I decided to create my own material for this course, using Hispanic films that cover controversial topics to engage students in conversations and to make them think about diversity.

Any advanced-level conversation course dealing with diversity in any language can be created using different films covering the specific topics the educator would like to use in class.

The goals for this advanced Spanish conversation course were:

  • Learn and use new idiomatic expressions in Spanish;
  • Acquire more confidence to communicate in Spanish;
  • Learn and use new vocabulary in Spanish about the business world, medical Spanish, and translation/interpretation;
  • Acquire precision when using specific vocabulary;
  • Acquire, use, and practice specialized vocabulary related to the studied topics;
  • Dominate complex grammatical structures in Spanish;
  • Debate about different controversial and current topics of the Hispanic world and learn about diversity;
  • Augment listening comprehension and improve Spanish pronunciation;
  • Research current affairs in Spanish.

The course is divided into five parts: film, quiz, test, debate, and presentation. Obviously, the first stage is to watch the film, after which students take a short quiz on the main characters and the plot. The conversation class is divided into groups of three to work on debates with a specific topic assigned by the teacher. The groups then present the ideas and some questions for the class to debate. After the debates, students work on longer group presentations that deal with a topic each group chooses that relates to the film. All the debate and presentation topics have to be approved by the teacher to make sure topics are appealing enough for the class, deal with the different topics the film presented, and are linked to the core topic of diversity.

To add a practical aspect to this course and make it more interesting for the students, I include some vocabulary from the professional world, so all the selected films have sub-topics related to the medical, business, and translation/interpretation worlds. Each group has to find three or four words used in the films that describe these professional worlds and use them in their debates. In this way, each student is able to discuss issues and vocabulary related to the specific professions in Spanish.

Students have to research different topics for the debates and presentations and bring current data and statistics on the topics they choose. It is important that they learn how to research for current information, and I often ask them for information sources to make sure the pages have current information about the topics for our class. I also ask them to cite their bibliography or internet websites at the end of each debate or presentation. Group debates need to last ten minutes per student, and long presentations are 15 minutes per student. Students are asked not to read directly from their PowerPoint presentations. They have to present their ideas without reading, engaging the audience and making it as interesting as possible for all of us. In this way, students learn how to communicate information using their own words and not looking at a piece of paper but at the audience—the students in the classroom. Talking about controversial topics and diversity is a way of keeping the audience interested in the presentations. All topics relate to the Hispanic films shown in class, including prostitution in the Hispanic world and how different societies deal with this problem; transsexuality, homosexuality, and society’s acceptance of marginalized and diverse people; drugs and drug addiction and how Hispanic societies deal with this problem; whether legal and undocumented immigrants in the U.S. should learn English and why; and how societies deal with legal and illegal immigration.

Most of the topics are studied from different viewpoints—from the viewpoint of the U.S., which is the cultural context students know best, and from the viewpoints of different Hispanic countries.

Viewpoints vary from country to country, and one of the things students learn is to respect different opinions and the diversity that comes with them. For example, a drug addict may be a criminal in the U.S. but be considered to have a medical condition in another country. Laws are different in each country, and students are able to learn about those differences through their presentations.

The films I used for this course had marginalized and diverse characters who had tough lives, so I could expose my students to real-life problems and diverse people. This led to their debates and presentations dealing with those marginalized people and their problems. Students brought up controversial topics in their presentations—topics they would normally not use in any class presentation unless they were studying sociology or social work, nor would they think about these problems and possible solutions in their normal cultural contexts. Students also learned about diversity and different ways of living and thinking from their presentations.

The films I used for this advanced Spanish conversation class were: María llena eres de gracia (Maria Full of Grace) (2004), directed by Joshua Marston; Todo sobre mi madre (All about My Mother) (1999), directed by Pedro Almodóvar; ESL: English as a Second Language (2005), directed by Youssef Delara; César Chávez (2014), directed by Diego Luna; and La misma luna (Under the Same Moon) (2007), directed by Patricia Riggen. What all these movies have in common is the presentation of the life and problems of common, diverse, and marginalized people. Students may not be able to relate to the characters in All about My Mother, by Pedro Almodóvar, since I consider Almodóvar to use the most marginalized characters and issues of modern societies in his movies, like homosexuality, transsexuality, prostitution, and drug addiction. Students are still able to experience a story that deals with human beings and their problems, and the movie makes them connect to the humanity and problems of those marginalized characters. Students end up feeling empathy for, and even liking, the marginalized characters by the end of the movie. This helps them to embrace diversity and empathize with somebody who is so different from themselves.

“The films I used for this course had marginalized and diverse characters who had tough lives, so I could expose my students to real life problems and diverse people.”

I often find it hard to enable students to talk about controversial topics without judging. We are all aware of our own judgments and prejudices about specific issues or different people, but one of the things we all learn is not to judge but to respect different people, their lifestyles, and their problems. Sometimes, talking about controversial issues and our own prejudices makes us open our eyes to a situation that we would never have allowed to enter our own world. I find it extremely important to talk about controversial issues and topics that are not part of our comfort zones. Only when we leave our comfort zones are we able to experience something new and therefore able to look from another point of view.

Learning to respect somebody we do not agree with in the classroom, or somebody who would never be part of our lives, like some of the marginalized characters in the films, makes us more human and less prejudiced. It makes us more respectful of diversity and what diversity really means. This advanced Spanish conversation class has also taught me about many new issues. Using controversial topics in the classroom with respect and with objectivity allows us to look at them with less judgment and look for possible solutions. It is often hard to talk about these subjects, but in my experience, the more we talk about them in the university classroom, or in high school, the easier it becomes to be less judgmental. Students learn how to normalize marginalized characters and their problems, so they can search for possible solutions. When I ask them “What would you do if you were in his/her shoes?”, they understand that they have a privileged context and try to understand the situation of a character who is less fortunate than they are. Empathizing with the less fortunate, or with people who are very different from them, enables them to embrace diversity and be more understanding of it.

Students enjoyed the first time I taught this course on campus and expressed in the course evaluation that they felt they had learned a great deal about the discussed controversial topics, some specific vocabulary from the professions, and what diversity means. They reported that they had learned how to talk more comfortably about controversial topics in Spanish at the advanced level, and I must admit that I learned a great deal too from their unique and well-researched debates and presentations.

Chita Espino-Bravo, PhD, is associate professor of Spanish at Fort Hays State University, Kansas, U.S.

Mass. House Pushes For Diversity in ELL Teaching

two young ELL boys in libraryLast week, the Massachusetts House passed a bill that would eliminate “one size fits all” teaching for English Language Learners ( ELL ). The bill, H. 3736 or “An Act relative to language opportunity for our kids”, was originally filed by Democrat House member, Jeffrey Sánchez, and was reported by the committee on House Ways and Means.

The bill aims to diversify how ELLs are taught in Massachusetts schools. School districts will make plans to evaluate the effectiveness of their ELL programs in areas of English language proficiency and readiness for students to join mainstream classrooms. The bill will also ensure that records are kept for instances in which a parent or guardian requests a waiver to remove a student from or refuse a student’s participation in an ELL program. It also expands a waiver process that was previously in place, that in which parents can remove their children from sheltered English immersion programs. The performance of the ELL children will be monitored to draw conclusions on teaching effectiveness.

The bill will also ensure that documented training will be provided by the district to staff who work with culturally and linguistically diverse student populations.

“There is a huge range of such students that range from young children of highly educated foreign graduate students to older students who are coming in increasingly large numbers from countries where they have little formal education and at the high school level are not literate in their own language. The same program does not work for all of these students,” Education Committee chair, Alice Peisch said on the House floor Wednesday afternoon. “Our rapidly changing demographics and the persistent achievement gaps are clear indicators that the approach has not been effective.”

The bill will also establish English learner parent advisory councils in any school district operating a language acquisition program for ELLs serving more than ELL’s, or where ELL’s are over 5% of the district’s student population. The councils will be composed of volunteer parents or guardians of ELLs and will advise the district on matters pertaining to ELLs. They will also meet with school officials to help design programs for ELLs.

Other matters to diversify how ELLs are taught were passed within the bill, which ban be viewed here. 

Dutch Shares Stage With Frisian in European Parliament

Flag of Friesland of Netherlands
Flag of Friesland of Netherlands

European Parliament is dedicating a session to Europe’s minority languages, and Frisian is getting its big debut on the Parliament floor, according to Dutch News.

The Frisian languages are a closely related group of Germanic languages, and has about 500,000 speakers who live in the Netherlands and Germany. There are three types of Frisian (West Frisian, Saterland Frisian, and North Frisian). Saterland and North Frisian are officially recognized and protected as minority languages in Germany, while West Frisian is one of the two official languages of the Netherlands, the other being Dutch.

Jan Huitema, a Dutch politician and Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from the Netherlands, is set to speak for one minute in his province’s native tongue in hopes of promoting the cultural and historical significance of the language.

Huitema, a member of the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, part of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe, told the Dutch broadcasting foundation Nederlandse Omroep Stichting that he looked forward to Frisian having ‘its day in the sun’ despite the fact that few audience members will be able to understand what he is saying.

According to Dutch News, the meeting has been organized by a group of around 60 MEPs who represent minority languages such as Scottish Gaelic, Catalan, and Low Saxon.

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